Chad Army Says It Killed Key Terrorists

By

Drew Hinshaw in Accra, Ghana And

David Gauthier-Villars in Paris

Updated March 3, 2013 1:16 p.m. ET

An army from one of Africa's most impoverished nations has claimed two momentous strikes against al Qaeda militants in recent days, highlighting the prominent role the battle-tested troops of Chad have been playing in the toughest missions of the French-led military campaign in Mali.

ENLARGE

Mokhtar Belmokhtar, identified by the Algerian interior ministry as the leader of a militant Islamist group, is pictured in a screen capture from an undated video distributed by the Belmokhtar Brigade.
Reuters

The announcement follows Friday's declaration by Chadian President Idriss Deby that his troops had also killed Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, another top rebel leader in Mali. Mr. Zeid has been considered Mr. Belmokhtar's archrival within al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, the Saharan terror franchise that conquered most of Mali last year.

"They were identified by some of their followers that we've captured," Chad's Communication Minister, Hassan Sylla, said in a telephone interview. He said both Messrs. Zeid and Belmokhtar were buried locally. "It's not in our culture to go around with bodies, they are not trophies."

Neither France nor Mali has confirmed Chad's claims. Both men have evaded the world's spy agencies as they have led al Qaeda deep in the desert of Mali.

Mr. Belmokhtar in particular—a 40-year-old kidnapping kingpin who trained as a teenager in Osama bin Laden's Afghanistan camps—has for 20 years frustrated CIA terrorist trackers as well as reporters in his homeland, Algeria, which have reported him dead on at least five occasions. French newspapers refer to Mr. Belmokhtar as "The Uncatchable."

Mali's ragtag soldiers fled when the two men emerged from desert hide-outs last year. Leading an army of thousands of al Qaeda-backed insurgents, they conquered a stretch of Mali the size of France.

In January, France began a military campaign to push al Qaeda out of its strongholds. In this mission it had a battle-tested asset: 2,000 troops from Chad.

The landlocked nation, a stretch of drought-hammered desert more than triple the size of California, remains one of the earth's most persistently poor: The average person gets by on $620 a year and dies at 49, according to the World Bank.

But its army is among the continent's most war-hardened. France and the U.S. have poured money, equipment and training into Chad's regular army since the Cold War, building a bulwark that initially was designed to battle both communism and deter military adventurism of Col. Moammar Gadhafi, then dictator of next-door Libya. In the 1980s, Washington and Paris sent over plane loads of gear, guns and pickup trucks to Chad.

In 1983, Mr. Gadhafi took sides in a Chadian civil conflict, effectively annexing a thin strip of desert at the very north of Chad with the help of mercenaries from Mali. Firing machine guns from the beds of pickups, Chad's commandos delivered Mr. Gadhafi one of his most decisive defeats in his 42-year rule. Historians called the conflict Africa's "Toyota War."

With both Mr. Gadhafi and the Soviet Union off the stage, Chad's army has been wrapped up in the instability that at present troubles the belt of desert countries across the top of Africa.

Foes include next-door Sudan: a pariah state that bucks at accusations of backing genocidal gunmen along Chad's border. The two countries have fought an on-and-off proxy conflict, each side accusing the other of harboring rebels.

Now, in Mali, a country 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) away, Chad troops are engaged in America's global war on al Qaeda, fighting AQIM.

A United Nations-backed plan for Mali aims to send as many as 6,000 troops from Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Togo and other West African countries. But those armies lack equipment, and their few hundred soldiers in Mali remain far behind the front, waiting for cargo planes to bring them bullets and cars.

Mr. Deby Itno, Chad's president, has exhorted Malian troops to join the battle for their country's sovereignty. "To you, my Malian brothers in arms, I say: Your place is on the frontline," Mr. Deby Itno told a meeting of West African leaders in Ivory Coast on Wednesday. "We are waiting for you in Mali's north, near the border with Algeria."

Meanwhile, in the volcanic outcrops of Mali's north, Chad is the only force supporting French troops in pursuing some of the world's most elusive terrorists.

At home, President Deby Itno faces political pressure to justify an intervention half a continent away, criticism that some analysts suspect has goaded the government into exaggerating it's kills.

"For him to say in a 48-hour period they killed the top two dogs in the Sahara, it takes the pressure off of him," said Rudolph Atallah, the former head of counterterrorism for Africa at the Pentagon. "I don't buy it for a bit. I've been watching Mokhtar Belmokhtar for the better part of a decade, the guy is extremely elusive. He's not like Abou Zeid. He doesn't run around in big circles with a big footprint. He tends to be smarter, better about his communication, not moving with a bunch of guys."

After fleeing into Mali's north in the early 2000s, terrorist watchers say Messrs. Belmokhtar and Zeid mastered the contours of this desert, memorizing its sand-swept ancient caravan routes, and pitching their holy war to villagers.

Twice, Mr. Belmokhtar married local women, in accordance with polygamous practices. U.S. and French defense officials believe at least one of those marriages gave Mr. Belmokhtar the social position he needed to charge safe-passage fees to cocaine cartels that move across the Sahara.

To their camps among the dunes and mountains of Mali's north, the two al Qaeda-backed commanders brought back scores of European hostages, ransoming them off to make the millions of dollars needed to build an army.

In 2006, they declared allegiance to al Qaeda, and to Osama bin Laden, who heaped praise on the money-making sect.

France declared war on AQIM in 2010, after a 78-year-old aid worker taken hostage died in Mr. Zeid's custody. At the time of his reported death, Mr. Zeid had been holding four French mine workers hostage for three years, according to French President François Hollande.

But French commandos failed to catch the al Qaeda warlords. After they led thousands of men across northern Mali last April, France readied a war plan, and in January, the first of 4,000 French troops arrived in an operation that in part includes the mission to find or kill Messrs. Belmokhtar and Zeid.

Seven French hostages are thought to be in AQIM custody.

Days after the French arrived, Mr. Belmokhtar's brigade showed up in Algeria, attempting to kidnap scores of foreigners in an attack that turned bloody, killing at least 38, during an Algerian rescue raid.

In the eight weeks since, Messrs. Belmokhtar and Zeid evaded the French special forces and attack helicopters combing the mountains of Mali alongside American surveillance drones. But according to Chad, their luck changed, over recent days, as that coalition pounced upon what Chadian Gen. Ngobongue called AQIM's "principal base" somewhere in Mali's north.

It has been "totally destroyed," he said, adding: "The hunt continues, in the pursuit of fugitives."

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